LEGISLATION to allow assisted suicide may require further safeguards, the MSP championing the proposals has admitted.

Patrick Harvie said creating a new offence of "coercing" someone to take their own life would help clarify the law.

The Scottish Greens leader was responding to questions from Holyrood's health committee, as MSPs took evidence on the Assisted Suicide Bill for the final time before a crunch vote.

As it stands, the legislation would allow those aged 16 and over with terminal or life-shortening illnesses to obtain help to commit suicide by making a formal request to their GP.

Requests must be signed off by two doctors before one of them issued a drug prescription to a licensed facilitator, who would assist the dying person end his or her life.

Opponents of the controversial Bill have argued it could result in vulnerable people being coerced into taking their own life.

Questioned by the committee, Mr Harvie said vulnerable people were not adequately protected from coercion at present.

He added: "Other options exist for the committee if the committee was minded to find in favour of the general principle but felt that there was some additional safeguard being required regarding the possibility of coercion.

"The committee might even feel that a criminal offence should be created in relation to trying to induce or incite someone into making a first or second request under the legislation.

"I think that in some ways would give a clearer position in terms of what was against the law than the current legislation does.

"I think it's Parliament's responsibility to make a decision here."

The committee will produce a report in April based on evidence taken over the past two months.

MSPs are due vote on the general principles of the Bill in April.

If passed, it will return to the committee for a period of further scrutiny when changes can be made.

Mr Harvie, who has piloted the Bill since the death of Margo MacDonald last year, insisted it was fit for purpose but he would not stand in the way of amendments.

Campaigners from the group My Death, My Choice staged a rally in support of the Bill outside the parliament as MSPs met.

Meanwhile opponents seized on a report from the parliament's delegated powers and law reform committee which called for rules governing the conduct of licensed facilitators to be laid down in the legislation.

Dr Gordon Macdonald, a spokesman for the campaign group Care Not Killing said: "This Bill is asking the Scottish Government to fund and train people who will become, in effect, state sponsored licensed killers, aged just 16, authorised to preside over the suicide deaths of of those as young as 16.

"Clearly, the committee has seen the inherent dangers the licensed facilitator scheme poses and the lack of clarity and precision which pose a threat to the weak and the vulnerable and those least able to defend themselves."

He added: "The fact of the matter is that this is a poorly written, badly constructed Bill and the sheer numbers of people who have criticised whole parts of it, quite aside from any moral or ethical objections, only highlight the problems with the legislation."